It seems even leading critics of News Corporation's bid for complete control of BSkyB are coming round to the hardheaded view that it is likely Rupert Murdoch will get his way despite the bitter opposition.

Even if it is referred to the Competition Commission by culture secretary Jeremy Hunt on the grounds of diminishing media plurality, guarantees to protect the independence of Sky News, and other concessions, are now seen as the most likely outcome.

This was the predominant tone of a recent seminar at London's City University, which exposed the harsh fact that the legal basis for stopping the deal was weak, in uncomfortable contrast to the strength of the campaigning.

Chris Goodall, a partner of Enders Analysis, which lobbied against the bid last autumn, conceded: "It is not an overwhelmingly strong case."

Goodall added that the Competition Commission, where he previously worked, was likely to approach News Corp's proposal as a business issue, not on public interest grounds.

London Business School's professor of marketing, Patrick Barwise, who roundly opposed the deal as against the public interest — as recently as the Oxford Media Convention last month — said it was now a case of "the more screaming the better", to alert politicians and the Office of Fair Trading to the level of concern and avoid a fig leaf solution.

Goodall said one suggestion was to make Sky News a separate news service, with an endowed, charitable trust status funded by News Corp.

But the former head of Sky News, Nick Pollard, suggested fears about potential editorial interference with the channel were misplaced.

Pollard told the seminar he had had only minimal contact with Rupert Murdoch during the whole period of 10 years he had run Sky News. For much of this period Murdoch was BSkyB's chairman.

Murdoch had not wanted to turn it into a Fox News-style operation, because it would not have worked in the UK, Pollard said.

"I had three phone calls from Rupert. None were about a story, or suggesting one. I suppose I had another five meetings in that 10 years," he added.

At one meeting he muttered something about Fox News, "wasn't it great", Pollard said.

He added that the suggestion that because News Corp only controlled 39% of BSkyB meant Murdoch or family members Elisabeth and James were held back from interfering with Sky News "doesn't hold water". Pollard, who left Sky in 2006, now runs British Forces Broadcasting Service.

David Elstein, head of programming at BSkyB in the 1990s, backed up Pollard, saying in the four years he'd had indirect responsibility for Sky News and Murdoch had exercised zero impact on it.

Elstein said he thought the chances of the deal going to the Competition Commission were "close to zero" and predicted Ofcom would withdraw its advice for a referral in exchange for wringing extra concessions out of News Corp.

In other City University sessions addressed by lawyers with regulatory experience at the OFT delegates were told there is, anyway, no clear legal definition of plurality contained in the public interest test applied to the deal. It was also viewed as requiring a subjective, political judgment by Hunt.